this may or may not be about someone you've never met

black book

the people here are really nice

The people here are really nice. Like really nearly freaky Pleasantville nice. I keep having to remind myself not to curse someone out for smiling or saying good morning to me; see you see, where I grew up a smile hides a boner and a “good morning” invites you over.

Micaela Silberstein
then & now

       I want to shed my skin because I don’t know where you touched me and I don’t want to have to blow a fair warning whistle every time I become intimate; waiting in fear for when I will be gasping for air, staring into tonight’s widening eyes staring into me. I want to proceed into the idiocy of falling in love naturally and without terrified ties that my panic will petrify whatever could have blossomed into a bleeding dissolve. I want to not worry about having a conversation, what has become, in my mind, the conversation. I want to trust newcomers in a whole new sense...and I do, but my faith in humanity may be distorted as it has been restored from witnessing sincere smiles and survival despite eons of terror and tyranny.

       I’m still wrapped in tainted skin and, so, I’m mad and vexed and seething that you get to get away with it, that you may seriously think you’ve done nothing wrong and caused no harm, that you’ll most likely live a better life than others more kind and misfortunate, that you struck again, not once, not twice, but three more times, and again with no consequence.

       I want to go back in time and report you and deal with the stipulations and accusations and trials so that the three other girls you pulled the same stunt with aren’t haunted and hateful. I want you to see me when my body shakes in riddles and I can’t figure out a damn thing to get myself to stop. I want you to see my psych notes and my weed bill and my relationships to understand the fucking security breach you imploded in me. I want you to hear the doubt filled questions after I confess what happened – why what you did is at least one of the reasons I am like I am. I want you to feel the physical weight to walk around with that fat. I want your parents and grandparents and your friends and cousins and your teachers and future girlfriends and all those you hold dear and those who hold you dear, to know what a foul disgusting horrible pig you are. That you’re a liar. A louse. A phony. You are pathetic and lacking. You are a coward.

       You spooked me into falling for a cruel joke of what is supposed to be and how to achieve your any dreams and desires. You took from me the greatest resource any human has, and mutated connection into paranoia and fear and hatred and a pounding window and heartburn every time I kiss someone. - For years, and still, in angles and darkness, between twitches and lips, I feel my lungs strangle my heart until it turns to stone and falls into my belly and I can’t breathe and I can’t get away. I’ve raced to cold showers, determined to scrub panic to suds and watch it swirl down the drain, and left sweethearts lost and alone in wrestled sheets. But, they’d find me, and rub my back, and want to hold me and tell me everything was okay and mean it; but that only made me push them further away. I’d hate them. I’d hate them all so god damn much just for loving me. – After all, how could they? I was damaged, taken, laid back and wiggled around in like a dilapidated disgusting dead wet fish. And even after pulling on torn fishnets, I still didn’t report the fucking bastard out of fear of eternal revival of the flashing memory to a monetarily committed jury via my mangled and mutilated forced confession – and the piece of shit went on to rape three more girls; whom all I can hope for, are doing better than I was.

       I’d like folks and dream of kissing them then and now, but once it came down to unbuckling I’d suffocate. Their once beautiful, pure features would muddle into a savage silhouette grinding into me, taking what it wanted and forgetting about the person inside. I’d imagine them above me, crushing me forever, loving me, hating me, whatever – with no escape and no time to count to ten. I ruined a lot this way. It almost became an obsession, expecting, anticipating. I’m to blame too in that way, in some way, since I couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of my own head. I’d start to believe all their sweet-talking and clever jokes were all just devices to get into me. And they were...they just may have been more than that too...but you pick up what you put down and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t putting down gold.

       Then I hit shrapnel corroded deep dark mineral rotting bottom. I hit so low I didn’t even want to die because I was afraid of coming back to life again. I wanted to disappear, to be nowhere; and have no skin and no thoughts, and just a smile that could fly around kissing crying foreheads and carrying them out of whatever they were in. I wanted to splatter like road kill across the pavement and become sand in an anthill. I wanted to pluck my limbs and give them away to someone, anyone, since I found everyone more useful than I – – I hid away like a monster, protected by hard working curtains, tussling between quilts and haunted wood. I wore hats and sunglasses and smoke and stench and leather and slumped and assessed your entire intention and broke you down in two. I hated you all. I hated you all because you had nothing to say. I’d read you your story and you’d detonate in awe like I’d shared my wonderful magic trick.

       But, really I’m just a jerk pulling stunts because I like to know I’m ahead of you - that I was right in the judgments I placed on you and because I enjoy watching you splintering to pin those mucky truths away. My little magic trick will get me in trouble if I forget to pretend that most people aren’t self-loathing, hateful, jealous, petrified individuals and that the only reason I can walk around with a smile on is because I know what a shitbag I am and I know I’m doing what I can to be a less of one.

       And so, still, after everything, I seem to have my bedside banter down and have since regrown, like a gawd damn phoenix. Yet, when I feel the fire speeding down the rope, I wonder if I’m only impressive because they’re not, and then wonder further as to why doubt is so easy to find?

       Last night, I kissed a girl, a southern Baptist bell, all night long; in the clurb, in the bathroom, at the bar, on the street, in a bus stop, in the taxi home, in this shy boy’s room and on his balcony, between smoke and theories, and goodbye, outside her taxi to take her home.

       I don’t know why I didn’t invite her to stay over, but after my pixie vamoosed, I kissed that shy boy in my best friend’s hallway in my skivvies he’d found me changing into. Confessions and kisses and tickles ensued and he asked me if I’d like to sleep in a real bed instead of a couch and so, holding his hand, I followed him back to his bedroom and into his sheets.

       Lying there, pressing, he got so nervous, he couldn’t get out of his own head. I told him it was okay, and really did mean it, but I could see the shame shake his head still. I curled up on him and kissed his chest and his cheeks and his freckles. “Are you always this sweet?” he asked. “Sometimes,” I lied. I kissed him again, he looked at me and smiled, with that look that’s like, ‘Oh shit! I could love you, keep cool, keep cool, keep cool.’ And, I felt my skin slip into his a little bit more and “Actually, no, not really, I don’t think I am usually this sweet” tumbled out with another kiss. And, again he smiled that smile and I felt our skin sneak deeper and felt him warm from the thought that someone might love him just a little bit.

       It took a while to get there - here. To become absent-minded and fearless and intimate and trusting. But, I didn’t think of you once, of any of it. Not with him, this kind, shy boy. I didn’t think of you once, not even while he and I were touching. I wasn’t afraid and, actually, all I could think about was slithering my skin and bones into his and staying there forever. Because now, with this sweet, darling boy, I can’t feel you at all and I love my skin and it’s warm and tanned and glowing and so god damn soft and he’s running his strong fingers across me and pressing into the muscles in my belly as to tickle me. And when I laugh and crunch up, he catches my legs with his and holds me up and stares at me like he really is happy I’m there and that’s all he’s thinking of. I stare at his freckles and wonder about loving him and can’t help but squeezing him because you’re finally gone and it’s just he and I here in the dark with the fan blowing, kissing secrets. 

Micaela Silberstein
pooches & pussies

What's the point of making movies, telling stories, especially since they've all been told before. What's the point of flying creative bubbles and balloons when i have friends who deal in actual real information that helps progress our society. We need artists to keep the insane sane, they say. But I don't see any geniuses sane. This is garbage. Stop reading now. Just STOP. 

You wanna hear my ghost stories painted like tulips twisting like thorns. You wanna read my pain so you can feel some of your own. You want to read my joy so you can understand and categorize. But I feel inside out when sentiments overlap and I'm left wanting to fuck and kill them all. 

Everyone is so anxiously waiting for me to overcome it all, that I too find myself pacing back stage, tapping my time. Then all too soon, I remember I'm running the hands and since I can't move them fast enough I cram my throat with smoke and do my darnedest. 

Drawing up pussies and video chatting are good distractions. Shelves and makeovers and broken lights and paint jobs are too. How many rugs do you think are online? I must have seen over three-thousand and I know I haven't even breached the surface. What a fucking snore. 

Oh, but I'm in love now - I could write about that. I could write about how it contrasts my past relationships and how far superior it is. I could tell you that the last suitors came in forms of cowards and liars but this one comes front and center and declares himself and his confessions with his chest barreled, waiting to be kissed and scratched. I could share with you our indiscretions in confidence and watch your mouth drop agape in repulsion and curiosity.  All his friends wonder how we do it and gag and still want exactly our romance. We are two dogs in a sea of pooches and pussies. 

Micaela Silberstein
on tour

These little girls are fawning over me while I’ve got mothers on their knees in my trailer. These little girls don’t know how precious they are and that they are fawning over old used up bits that old hags beg and crawl for. They don’t understand the concept of settling in full, and they may probably end up doing as much of such, since they don’t, as many don’t, understand the vast vast numbers of beautiful delightful human soul mates for you to meet and fall in love with and learn and grow with and share. There really are so many fish in the sea. But luckily, these precious little nymph fingerlings are here for me.

Micaela Silberstein
my brother's girlfriend

My brother’s got a girlfriend and they’re in love. My brother has had a few girls before this southern juniper, but besides one second grade minx that caught his first grade eye, the rest were all pleasantries and jealousy and unhealthy.

This one though, this one is a wide eyed, kind, quick jab to the truth. She, unlike most, is not afraid to admit what she does not know. She, unlike most, realizes that by doing so she will advance and advance and plant roots where others can’t see grass or ground.  

My brother’s girlfriend has an iconic look and an iconic name, but she doesn’t flaunt it or wave it around in your face; because she, unlike most, understands she doesn’t need to waste time on such artificial nonsensical “niceties.” She’s shy, vulnerable, clandestinely competitive and tougher than nails hammered into a baseball bat. She’s wiser than most her age and older, and still she doesn’t even know how pure and rare she is.

I don’t know much about where she grew up besides it being tiny in comparison to where my brother and I grew up, and that it hosts some great sluggers, but I get the sense that she’s been accidentally smothered, unwittingly holding off on unfolding.

My brother is so god damn smitten by her that when he told me he’s “completely fucking in love with her” and my response was one of those girly squeals, quickly tightened with an apology, he gushed and assured me that it totally deserves an "aww.” My brother is so god damn completely in love with her that he asked to use a postcard from my collection and tried out at least fifteen different pens, assessing their colors and textures to find the perfect ink. My brother is so head over fucking heels for this little lass that when he finished the card, which took up the whole two pages and the backside, he held it up for me, just far enough away so I couldn’t get a glimpse at the content, and asked me if it was legible. I told him I couldn’t see it, but I’m sure she’d get through it. He sent it off with a kiss and my brother’s girlfriend read it over and over and alone and again with her mom and sister. How wax seals.

My brother’s girlfriend got the nice china and the vacation invite. She celebrated my quarter century sunrise birthday and has the same taste in booze as me. She’s a bright bulb and a wonderful companion and her eyes remind me of Salinger’s Esme. Her’s are green green, faded, like foggy early morning mysteries and my brother’s are blue blue speckled and quenching. I can see their eyes melting together like a terrific lagoon and I hope they sail away to one, not too far away, soon. 

Micaela Silberstein
The Meaning of Life

My best friend's healthy as an ox mother, collapsed from a stroke yesterday morning while readying for a swim at their lake house. My best friend just called me from the hospital to tell me her mom wasn't going to make it and that it was good to hear a voice besides a family member's and that the doctors said its the worst stroke they've ever seen and asked if they'd like to keep her on the oxygen tank or donate her organs.

I joked, bemused, "they couldn't wait a day to ask?" She got off shortly after and I sat on my mom's comfy red rocking chair looking down at the world from our porch at our second home, waiting for a squirrel to come gather nuts for supper or spring.

I apologized to her for not having something smart or better to say, since the best I could come up with, was "try not to shut down; I know that's easier said than done, but I'm here, always, whenever you need me." She knows it's true and for that I'm grateful but I just want to teleport to the hospital, to her and to hug her and to have some magical spell to be able to cure her mom and fix it all so when I tell my best friend 'everything is going to be okay,' I can really mean it. But I can't. I can't save her mom, I can't make everything okay. All I can do is listen and be a shoulder and pretend to have something wise and learning to say once in a while. And even that seems useless and somehow egotistical. After all, that's her mom, lying there, connected to tubes and a tank. That's not just some sick woman, that's my best friend's mom, that without, my best friend, our memories, our intersecting lives wouldn't exist. This woman that's fallen in love and broken hearts and plates and her hymen and squeezed out a boy and three beautiful girls and nursed them to be wonderful, thoughtful, careful, caring, truly lovely individuals, body is, for some reason, betraying her, and failing, without even a hope for a proper goodbye. Everything they've been working on their whole lives together, from breathing and walking and crying and cooking and fucking and feeding cats and babies and parties and doing whatever else people do, is ending, it's over, the deal is breaking; making this woman, this life, this precious wonderful life, involuntarily motionless, breathless and will-less. And now all that separates her from this world and the next is no longer her will, but a socket. They say we're human, but in the end we end up hooked up to machines. And now, my best friend's mom is hooked up to something she'd never want to rely on. To something they really have no control over, especially if the power were to go out; just a stupid little fucking button & socket.

I picture her shriveling like a raisin in hospital robes and every time my best friend blinks her mom shrinks a little more. I wish there was no fucking button, no fucking decision, that she would just keep shriveling and shriveling every time my best friend blinks, until she disappears into thin air, and we can keep her alive by believing she decided to fly off. But I can't do that either. All I have are my stupid little words and a lumpy shoulder and all she'll have is her dad, half-brother, two sisters, and the memory of squeezing this button that means the difference between life and death. 

Micaela Silberstein
apologies to baby angels

I'm riding the train home, watching a girl draft an apology note to a friend - something about a missing pair of sunglasses. The girl explains, that while she understands the earth shattering loss, that her friend has no idea about what's going on in her life and in so many polite words, to, please, ever so kindly, back the fuck up. 

Another woman, sitting the next section down and across from me, looks exactly like Michael Jackson, post transformation. I bet she cleans up nice and good, like the type of exotic whore you fall in love with.

The blonde girl fidgeting across from me feels pretty today and is nervously looking around to find out if anyone else agrees.  

The boy across from me seems too young to be so covered with all his tattoos, but he's dancing with a boombox and the angels around his neck.

Micaela Silberstein
these days

We sit on pavements instead of benches, shaking scarred hands with Styrofoam cups seeking coins and courage, corrosion eroding from the gaps in our teeth where bone used to hang. Nobody listens to people when they’re one step closer to death.

We talk amethysts and triangles and combat and big open fields and dreams we think the government will help make come true, even though they’re half the reason we're sitting on the pavement in the first place. But, people don’t want to hear about UFOs and time served. People don’t care that we fought the war abroad and at home. People want well-mannered tooth bearing folks with no scabbed elbows or fingernail beds. People want normal so they have something to compare themselves to, something to work towards, a goal, something they can call progress, or attribute to a movement…even though they're mostly motion and emotionless.

We know they can see the smoke seething from our gums, and they know we can see them shun their heads and jokes away from our stinking disgrace. We know they call us crustys and druggies and scizos and losers and lazy fuck tards and shit bag, and they think about pissing on us when we're finally asleep in a doorway and they're stumbling home drunk to the 5th avenue McMansion their daddy bought them.  We know you're looking and wondering what went wrong and how we deal and why we lug our lives around instead of settling down. They pity our "poor" pooches and weep bedtime tears about how unlucky and unfed they must be, then rant on their precious Facebook page about the injustices in our society and animal cruelty. The next post is a caked up make up sorority squat encouraging/supporting injections and inflations. 

You see, we seek shelter when we need it, food when we're hungry, memories because we can never have enough, and afflictions to deal with yours. You see, you and me, we're not so different, you and me. Each step is closer to death, so why not make each step so full of life? Join us, down on the pavement, the world seems so big and round again. Don't you miss the weight of gravity?

Micaela Silberstein
pokemon & black cats

Everyone is playing Pokemon and there is a black cat in the window watching the zombies with me. The woman in front of me is in stripes and wet hair and we all know where and what she's coming from at 11:16 pm this fine evening. It really is a very fine tempered evening. 

A couple is laughing next to me, the man sees me, but barely, and I don't care if anyone laughs at me again because I finally understand that I'm invisible. I can move like a ghost right through you all and point out all your secrets you thought were hidden.

There is an older woman waiting and a younger woman eating sushi, both sitting on a bench at the Jefferson Street L train station right now, at 11:18 pm, waiting for the same train as me. I pace back and forth at the end of the platform, waiting, just like them. I thought my train was coming but I'm drunk and have been confusing the subway construction lights for my train's headlights. According to the clock I have a few minutes before its arrival, but I feel the breeze in the back of my knees from the opposite track and now see mine too.

I'm still hungry and I feel bad because he thought I said lie down when I really did say something about fireworks. I guess the lie down could have been the same thing. Oh, well.

 

Micaela Silberstein
stuffed animals

Stuffed animals are easy because they always love you and want to do whatever you want to do even if that’s playing tea without actual snacks or tea for the 17th god damn day in a row. Stuffed animals can teach you things, like about responsibility and compassion. They can teach you stories, especially if they’re from a story book…but real friends… living things, like animals and people… especially those you can have more than a one sided conversation with, an educating, inspiring, perhaps even somehow, transcending conversation, even just once in your whole life time, is better than all that cushy uncomplicated stuffed love. 

Micaela Silberstein
Smiles from Malta

I met a little old man last night in Doc Holidays from Malta who coulda been a pool shark if he wanted, but just played the game for fun, no glory, he's already had enough of that.  He has two daughters and pictures of them in his pocket, but he won't show them off. I'm sure the reactions he's heard throughout the years have joked about more than diamond rings. Still, he laughs with his whole face and his mouth really truly does stretch back as wide as his ears. His teeth are shiny with spit and he half sticks-half dangles his tongue out, especially when he’s smiling, which is all the time; apparently, just like me. 

Micaela Silberstein
sweet, dear

         Every god damn fiber of my being wants a drink. I want that sweet, dear poison streaming, sinking through my veins and bones and to stay coated on my tongue so every time I swallow I can taste those sweet, dear bitter chemicals. At least I'd be in control of that death. I smoke more because it makes me feel French and exquisite and I've always loved it and I suppose it seems less toxic than being a boozer.  Now, I am caught between acceptable, nay, welcomed, hilarious daily inebriation and the part where I became a college grad and an adult in society and was supposed to inherit all of life's secrets when I accepted the hat and robe and diploma. But I didn't actually attend my graduation...

         I see a young me in a Millennium Falcon t-shirt sitting across from me on the uptown 6. Her head is dropped in her lap, eyes in her palms, hiding torn nail beds, bleeding and swollen from her gnawing, braces-less teenage teeth. When she looks up to scan for signs of life, I see the tired look in her only a few tortured teens know.

        Bellinis, mimosas, sangria, ooh! And all their fruity carbonated concoctions of the like! Ooh thank you yuppies for inventing drinks to welcome us boozers into sophisticated society as ageless and hilarious, again; and now with toast and eggs and the morning sun. See, so, sometimes yuppies are right... and well, yuppies are right even when they're wrong because when enough yuppies start yapping the same nonsense, the same nonsense comes true, becomes invented, whatever needs to happen does... because what yuppies want is good for business; because, what yuppies want, yuppies get; because their fat fat wallets and wide wide boredom always need more room for their gluttonous bellies and the leather that feeds them.

         This girl, this younger me, she leafs and hopes until defeat strikes and she drops her head again, lower and lower still, like she's already figured out the world and there's nothing more to watch today because she's seen it all before and, sadly, none of it is all too new. She gleams, prays even, for variations, for initiation, but really it's all the same and she's bored and tired, not so much from sleep deprivation, as from the bull that is the shit that rounds the world. Most are fortunate to ride the blindness of the truth that ignorance is bliss; but this girl, this sweet young young dear girl, can't help but see the spigot we rely on to revolve. 

         I cannot tear my eyes from her, because she seems even more heartbroken than I, and I hope she doesn't turn to booze and smoke to deal when gravity crumbles and we fall out of space because (half of) our darling country couldn't wrap their heads around anything beyond denying this sweet warming.

Micaela Silberstein
sleep

She’s a creature, just like me

The first creature like me I’ve ever seen.

I wake for no one but thee... ladida

I must kill her and eat her so she stays with me

            Inside me forever. Love me!

Drag her dummy through

Big and yonder til collapse and refute refuge. Run away bastard.

They’ll call me the run away bastard, 'cus I’ll have started it that way.

Tweedledee & Tweedledum so placed in shapes and forms and time!

The twins, Jekyll + Hyde

Sleep through your whole life

Slept through his whole life

Why start an outburst at a ward

I’ll sleep through your life

And high times can become realities, it happens all the time.

Micaela Silberstein
brainwashed

Israel is plagued with the talent of brainwashing any and all that come in contact with it. They brainwash their youth to protect and serve. They brainwash their blood abroad to come and make aliyah. They brainwash me to love and adore every aspect of them I've come to known. They've brainwashed my friends into thinking I'm brainwashed and only and entirely devoted to them and only them. They've brainwashed all that don't know into thinking they have the ability and willingness to brainwash any poor soul they can get their hands on. 

What brainwashing no one talks about is their inability to brainwash for peace. They don't talk about the babes and bombs erupting from rockets. They don't talk about the shelters and the folks lucky enough to have one in their own homes. They don't talk about the ongoing, pestering hate, or their gratefulness to have a plot of land they can finally call their own. They don't talk about a lot.

But, then all over, a lot of people don't talk and don't find out about things they don't know about because for a lot of people education exists solely between school walls and once that end of day bell rings and the graduation ceremony calls their names, they're done. They're gone, and whatever part of their brains that may have been turned on is gone now too. And they rant, and shit, and blame, and laugh at all who run to safety, who run to a holier, better life, a happier, beachier one and call them brainwashed. Meanwhile, they haven't a clue what true brotherhood really means. 

Micaela Silberstein
welcome to

I have super powers. I know you and feel you and have felt you even before you were alive. I am off my medication and going home to get stoned. I’ll see poppies and turning drying racks. I’m craving Vonnegut and quiet. I’m no transfers and all train lines and a watchful eye. I’m history in the making. I’m all your shame and guilt and mine and the waves to wash it all away. I’m the perfect disguise and I’m screaming. I’m Pablo and fat booties and ray bans and iPhones and blows of cocaine. I’m dreads in a lost and found. I’m Eraser Head with your family. You’re not even you when I look at you. You’re a plaid shirt in a uniform self-prescribed.  You’re requirements without legal action. I’m your tapping foot and the all holy triple hat beat. I’m a kick in the face and new trainers. You’re in the way. You’re all in the god damn way. I’d scream if I thought it’d do anything and by anything I mean grace in silence and move to clear. I’m your little blind beast. You're blisters, I’m the god damn sun. I’m video games and slaughter houses and Sunday dinner but not Sunday mass. I’m everything you don’t even know you want to be. I’m an all white jumpsuit, fresh as can be and a parachute and the air inside holding you up, drifting you down like babes do to storks.  I’m a smirk you’ll never understand. I’m knowledge. A dictionary. I’m underground and underwater and gills. I’m fucking alive. I’m deep breaths and panic attacks. I’m train head lights. I’m hardcore sex on a platform waving goodbye. I’m a child’s eyes hiding behind your parents screaming bedroom door. I’m hungry. I’m a braid for tugging. I’m a lasso and the feast you rein in. [pull me (if you can).]  I’m a mother fucking picnic and the basket, blanket and dog.  I’m dead soldiers not on memorial day.  I’m the best night’s sleep and a comforter. You’re lies and falsified wants carving a picture of yourself, high, on an illustrious white horse. I’m here. I’ve got to go. Goodbye!

Micaela Silberstein
Ben Gurion's Tomb

I can feel the bodies piling up. Mine’s in there too. The paved road warps and I weep because despite the endless conflict, all is unrested - I watch a girl from the bus window run home down a dirt road back to her goats and chores, I don’t know what she’s running from or towards and neither do I.  I see tree stumps and garbage littered out of cans and beneath ocean liners.  God damn the world is so fucking beautiful and epic and simple.  Why is it so hard to see that? Why has it always been so hard? I can’t get their faces, that window, that gun, his dirty scowling bald mouth out of my god damn head. At the wonders of the world, I’m so overcome with joy and the horrors of history: mine and theirs and yours. I know you. I know you’ve suffered; I know you still .  I don’t know when it will end, if ever. I know I’m still waiting. I see their young playful faces, happy and playing, not (seeming) afraid, even though their jungle gym is in a bomb shelter and joy has a limit of 15 seconds in case the sirens ring and the rockets red blaze, bursting at home, taking their days and friends and limbs.  Chances are far and few and good ones are hard to forget and bad ones shape who we become.  Meanwhile, I’m overwhelmed by the world; when did we invent buses and satellites and nail polish.  I feel like I’ve been asleep for centuries and now I’m here once again, now on the same, yet vastly changed land and my mission is to re-purify this place and make sure it survives.  Where is the balance? Swap the slums and the mansions. Bask your head and blow me. I’m ready for sleep. Different fascinates me; why does hatred deal in fear and what’s unknown then breed as addiction?

I’m still turning away from your window, eyes opening on a pouring pane and your shadowed humping beast of a body.  I’m still walking down the aisle and looking at your stupid clothes and the make up over the hole in the middle of your face I never kissed (while it was still breathing). I’m still picturing talons growing from my nail beds and scratching out your eye balls and tearing off your skin.  I’m still scared.

I wanna skin all my skin off because I don’t know where you touched me and I don’t want to be the remnants of you lingering on my body. You make me sick/I’m sick with myself.  I don’t want to have that conversation with everyone I fall in love with. That I’m damaged. That my parts were used shortly unbeknownst to me. I don’t want to look pathetic and weak and sad and scared. I don’t want to panic when someone comes near. Everyone has their own 15 seconds, and there’s a reason we all grip to stay there too.

Micaela Silberstein
How to Take an Ordinary Man and Turn Him into a Killer

“A country is not just what is does, but what it tolerates.” – Kurt Tucholsky

When I asked my friend, Adi, if she was scared about being in the IDF, and what that meant to her, she said simply and with innocent poise: “my people took care of me and now it’s time to take care of mine.”

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People get used to killing – conditioning conditions through orders, alcohol or asking Ukrainians. 

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Dear Mommy and Children,

            Want to learn how to take an ordinary man and turn him into a killer? To disobey orders, you become a coward, a traitor, weak, then no one wants to be associated with, friends with, or even just with them. Bravery, on the other hand, is not recognized in this situation.

            The horrors, they (try to) command us to, such as torturing, separating, lying, stealing, raping, slaughtering, starving, condemning, murdering (etc.) Jews are supposed to come as as natural as eating breakfast in the morning. Deception is the most important thing. I don’t think I’ll ever wipe the smell/stench of their burning bodies from my nose and lungs.  I can taste their lives gone in my throat. Their screams echo, ringing through my ears, tearing through my brain.  We read their letters and they write their loved ones telling them they’ll see them soon, and my heart breaks because I’m the one that will put a bullet in their brains, their children’s, to send their naked starving bodies into the showers that drown them with chemical gas eroding millions of them away because if I don’t, I’m a coward and then just as bad as the enemy, the poor, slimy, rat Jews. And then I loose you and my future and yours.  We pack them like cattle in boxes and deceive them with numbers for baggage and property, but once they pass go through these damn iron gates, they do not, but I know their doomed fate.  When will these people get to rest? Why am I meant to feel as a coward for not wanting to hate these PEOPLE?! They are people!! Not animals, as we act and treat them. That they are meant to be forgotten. Possessions, family, food, familiarities, basic human necessities, stripped away as meant to feel like the animals they are.  Still, they remain. Still, they write letters to loves ones. Still, they speak Yiddish and preach the words of their god in Hebrew.  Still, they laugh and love even through their tears and hunger. How strong they remain.  Just one of them is stronger, mightier, more, human and better than the entire Nazi following.  We take their names and exchange them for numbers. If they forget their “new” name, we are expected to shoot them dead immediately, as they now, even more so, don’t deserve to live.  Most of my “comrades” enjoy this task.  They take pride in eliminating another rat scum devil. AND STILL, through this, they survive, and with the hope of peace and reuniting with their family.

            I can see their morals slipping. Parents and children steal from each other, they cannot be rabbits, they must be wolves.  This may be the only place where luck exists, as it is a land/place/jungle/hell with no laws.  They eat snow for water.  We do not call, treat, or think of them as humans and now, even within family, on cannot recognize another.  Their knees look like knobs from a tree, but cannot hold up their bodies that are merely twigs.  We bulldoze them like garbage, trash into ditches and away, just to burn, to rot. We don’t even feed them to the dogs because they are all contaminated, mangy rats, plus the dogs can barely sniff them out as they are barely bones and skin. I look at the faces of my comrades and they have become hardened, oblivious, as they still laugh and joke and fuck their wives and kiss their children’s clean blonde Aryan heads.  I don’t know how they can go on. I see the shame Hitler intended for these poor star bearing folks, sinking into their souls, and they are starting to believe the lies and degradation and humility.  They couldn’t even swallow or digest food if they were to get some.  Their bodies wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do with it. One day their names will paint the walls so their kin and kin of kin may remember them despite Hitler and the Nazi’s/Hate’s efforts.

            The eighth day of the week is for imagination. Another love, compression of compassion comes from the horror. 

            Still they pray, still they hope, still they believe in god and good. They will rebuild. Their city will stand, layering and layering, reaching higher and higher into heavens on earth. Their building tops will glow and glisten in the sun. The same sun that didn’t come to save them when they were huddled into bunk beds and gutters and prostitution rings. Oh how lucky the pretty ones are. My group called me a faggot in so many words when I wouldn’t fuck the this pretty little jew they’d been passing around. I pretended I was so disgusted by them as a race, as a whole, that I wouldn’t even want to stick my dick in one in fear of contamination. They laughed and applauded my commitment to the cause. Hitler even heard about it and couldn’t have given me a bigger, warming hug and a nice slice of apple strudel for my dedication and true belief. It took all I had not to vomit, to lunge and pull his throat and lungs, connected to everything, down to his spleen and toenails out by the clenches of my fist from his neck. Instead I “grinned and bared it.” Just like the Jews. Except, they couldn’t even grin at most points; their bodies and minds and hearts had forgotten how.

They will find a way to survive, to resurrect, to remember. True beauty is only fully revealed once everything you’ve known is shattered and broken.  Barracks of stone and wood and pillars. Candles burn strong to remember to see the light, despite all that is and was lost. Still they, we survive. 

I’ll be home soon,

Love,

Papa

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“I happened to find a pencil and was writing out of a whim, out of nostalgia, in a dream.”     –Primo Levi

Today, I touch the cobblestones and bunk beds and trains and carts and rocks and can feel their ashes and blood and footsteps and whispers on my fingertips.  They are all still here. Haunting, reminding us, to move forward, to see past the matte prism and onto the glowing, beaming, building, layered, complicated world.

Boker Tov, y’all.

Micaela Silberstein
yaffa markets and their men

They touch our clothes and try our jewelry and toys and say thank you and toda and leave. They tease and bargain. I try to make them happy, I am happy when they smile, but the price is never quite good enough. Cheaper, cheaper, can you do less? No? They walk away and sing their sorrys and we'll be back, and I wait and wait until they find love at the right price and we strike a deal and I feed my children and they wear our garb and flash it around the world and brag about how good the deal they got from the cutest little man was.

^ click through ^

 

Micaela Silberstein
lebanon

Lebanon is a string of lights in a hazy light and i can hear the gun shots and all i can think of is myself, my needs, alone time and sleep.

Micaela Silberstein